John Drane - Christian Ministry

Christian Ministry

Drane's interests have never been merely intellectual and academic. He is an ordained minister and has an established track record as a Christian leader, serving on many key national bodies in the United Kingdom. From 1984 to 1990 he was convener of the Mission Committee of the Scottish Churches Council, which at the time was the official ecumenical body of all the Scottish churches. It was in that context that some of his most distinctive missional thinking was first conceived, and one of the highlights of that period was an event celebrating the Christian festival of Pentecost at Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988, which attracted a record crowd of more than 48,000 people and for which he received an award from the UK government which is preserved in the archives of Action of Churches Together in Scotland. For a period in the 1990s he was chairperson of the National Prayer Breakfast for Scotland and he is currently co-chair of the Mission Theology Advisory Group, which is a think tank jointly sponsored by the Church of England and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland). His acceptance in so many different parts of the civic and ecclesiastical establishment means that it is difficult to categorize his thinking by reference to any of the conventional theological divisions of conservative, liberal, evangelical, and so on. He has been a guest of HM Queen Elizabeth II at her Scottish home, Balmoral Castle, while also being regarded as an important theological resource person for the emerging church in the UK (he is a member of the board of mission shaped ministry, which is part of the Fresh Expressions initiative of the Church of England).

Drane is married to Olive Fleming Drane, with whom he has three children. She holds a postgraduate degree in theology and is a Visiting Fellow of St John's College, Durham, as well as being an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, California. They regularly work together in both church and academic settings.